Vettel: Mercedes still out of reach in dry

Sebastian Vettel thinks Nico Rosberg's pole lap proves Mercedes masked its true pace in practice and admits his only chance of victory from the front row in Hungary is if it rains on Sunday.

Vettel was briefly on provisional pole in the closing moments of Q3 on a track which had been getting quicker and quicker after an earlier spot of rain, only for Rosberg to go top of the timesheets by a full half second with his final run. Rain and thunderstorms are forecast for Sunday's race and Vettel thinks that could be the only thing to put Red Bull in the mix for a victory.

"We are here to fight," Vettel said. "But if it rains we definitely have a better chance there than in standard, normal dry conditions but then we were closer this weekend in outright pace. It's hard to judge if they were sandbagging or running different modes on Friday. It should be closer than the last couple of races but we should have a good fight with the Williams, which has been a bit out of race in the last few races."

After being a distant third behind the resurgent Williams in the last three races Vettel emerged victorious in a tussle with Valtteri Bottas for second, but he is still disappointed by the gap out in front.

"I think probably the nature of the track suits us a bit more - less straights. Historically we have always had a competitive car around here. It seems that we are a little bit closer but obviously Nico's final lap was very good so the gap was again quite big, bigger than we were hoping for because it looked like if we got everything got everything perfect and Nico had a bit of a wobble we could have a crack but it didn't happen, they did a good job. Q3 was a mixed bag, could have been anything, aso therefore with the dry conditions at the end to get P2 was the optimum."